The ill-informed think that its opposite is strictness; but no virtue is the opposite of a virtue. What then is set over against mercy? It is cruelty, which is nothing else than harshness of mind in exacting punishment. “But,” you say, “there are some who do not exact punishment, and yet are cruel, such as those who kill the strangers they meet, not for the sake of gain, but for the sake of killing, and, not content with killing, they torture, as the notorious Busiris and Procrustes, and the pirates who lash their captives and commit them to the flames alive.” This indeed is cruelty; but because it does not result from vengeance — for no injury was suffered and no sin stirs its wrath — for no crime preceded it — it falls outside of our definition; for by the definition the mental excess was limited to the exaction of punishment. That which finds pleasure in torture we may say is not cruelty, but savagery — we may even call it madness; for there are various kinds of madness, and none is more unmistakable than that which reaches the point of murdering and mutilating men. Those, then, that I shall call cruel are those who have a reason for punishing, but do not have moderation in it, like Phalaris, who, they say, tortured men, even though they were not innocent, in a manner that was inhuman and incredible. Avoiding sophistry we may define cruelty to be the inclination of the mind toward the side of harshness. This quality mercy repels and bids it stand afar from her; with strictness she is in harmony.
At this point it is pertinent to ask what pity is. For many commend it as a virtue, and call a pitiful man good. But this too is a mental defect. We ought to avoid both, closely related as they are to strictness and to mercy. For under the guise of strictness we fall into cruelty, under the guise of mercy into pity. In the latter case a lighter risk is involved, it is true, but the error is equal in both, since in both we fall short of what is right.